The Egyptian government's crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in advance of the April 8 local elections was motivated by its determination to exclude the Brotherhood from the 2011 presidential election and is likely to persist until the matter of presidential succession is settled, argue two Carnegie experts.

In Egypt's Local Elections Farce: Causes and Consequences, Carnegie's Amr Hamzawy and Mohammed Herzallah argue that Egypt's controversial April 8 elections underscore the present backward slide and a broad deterioration in Egyptian politics.